


I See Dead People

by Sariau



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Balance (Podcast)
Genre: Ango's parents are in this, Angst and Feels, Angus can see Dead People, but this is sad, it doesn't go so well for them, their choice and all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 17:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14194287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sariau/pseuds/Sariau
Summary: So I bugged BlueMoodBlue into giving me a prompt."Angus meets Kravitz first"this is the result





	I See Dead People

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluemoodblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/gifts).



> So! My brain is a little twisted, and instantly turned to Angus was a stillborn. 
> 
> sorry.

Angus McDonald never knew his parents.

It’s not something that bothers him. He has his Grandpa, and his Grandpa loves him.

Once, he asked about his parents, sometime around his fifth birthday. His Grandpa, with a serious face, told him that his parents loved him very much, and that they paid everything to make sure Angus was happy.

He didn’t really understand at the time, but he did, eventually.

Angus has lots of friends, and he is seldom alone, even when Grandpa has to go off and do his job. Grandpa has warned him a lot to be careful of what he says. That Angus is a bright boy, and he could hurt someone with his words without meaning to.

Angus knows that he’s pretty smart. His friends teach him all sorts of things. One of them even used to be a detective! They say their name is Caleb, and they’re one of his best friends.

They read the Caleb Cleveland series together, and Angus enjoys when Caleb mutters about unsound logic, unfounded leaps of deduction, and inaccuracy of the events. Angus reads. He listens. And he learns.

Grandpa says that being a braggart isn’t good, but Angus isn’t bragging when he takes one look at a crime scene he stumbled upon, and says he knows which of the three people in a lineup next to the police wagon did it.

Which is Angus likes helping people, and Angus likes solving mysteries. So that was how he started being a real detective instead of pretend with Caleb and his other friends.

He brings his Grandpa to the station the next day he doesn’t have to go to work, and does his best impression of an adult when he asks if he can work too and help pay for the things around the house.

He has his reasons all planned out, and his friends helped him practice!

After many attempts, and no whining at all, Grandpa gives in, and Angus proves his skills without any of his friends’ help! He had debated asking them to come for support, and proving to himself that he could do it on his own. But the feeling of fulfillment at the end was amazing. He ended up smiling the whole way back on Grandpa’s shoulders.

* * *

His friends don’t usually stay for very long. A month or two at most, and they leave. It’s not all of them at once, which is good, but it still hurts when Caleb doesn’t show up one day. Then the next. And again until Caleb has been gone a week, then a month.

Grandpa still thinks his friends are imaginary, and Angus lets him believe it. He’s getting to the age that he gets looks from strangers for talking to his friends in public, and he learns that there were some things he could have gotten away with that he can’t anymore.

The realization is shocking, for all that it makes sense.

It was the first lie Angus told his Grandpa, and he promises to himself that it will be the only one.

* * *

Angus is there when Grandpa falls. It would have been nothing if Angus had fallen like that, but his Grandpa is old. Like a weathered chair not able to hold any weight.

It breaks.

Angus is there to see the serious looks passed between the healer and Grandpa. His Grandpa is amazing, and is a model to look up to, but he has never been that good at lying.

When Grandpa tries to send him off on some time-wasting journey for a set of utensils, Angus sits stubbornly at his chair with as stubborn expression on his faces as he can make it. “You’re dying. Don’t send me away.”

Grandpa tries again, but Angus doesn’t budge.

* * *

Angus sits by Grandpa’s bedside as he withers away, day by day.

He calls the station about his situation, and they’ve given him leave. They all know he wouldn’t come in even if they told him to.

So, day by day, Grandpa loses his vigour. His hands, already old and wrinkly and spotted, start to shrivel. Grandpa can’t get out of bed on his own, so Angus has to take care of the house, make the food, and help Grandpa when he needs the bathroom or to shower.

Less than a week passes before Angus can see something silver and shimmering, extending from Grandpa’s elbow. The man is asleep, and his soul is disconnecting before his eyes.

It becomes more than Grandpa’s left hand and forearm. Soon, his other limbs start lifting out of his corporeal form. When he’s fully disconnected, he calls the priest.

Grandpa is awake in his spiritual form.

Not surprising. Angus has never seen a spirit sleep.

“Angus?” Grandpa asks, with a hit of fear in his voice. Like he is afraid of the answer.

“Yes Grandpa?” Angus finishes covering the body with the blanket, smoothing out the wrinkles. Then he looks.

Grandpa is younger. By more than a few years. But the man’s shoulders look tense like they’re holding the weight of the planet. Grandpa looks resigned.

“I thought as much. I am so sorry, Angus.” Grandpa doesn’t look at him, his face scrunched up, and he turns away to hide the expression from Angus before he can get a proper look.

“I don’t mind, Grandpa. At least we’ll have a little more time before you have to leave.”

“How long?” Grandpa asks, hopeful and almost cringing at the same time.

“A month, maybe less, maybe more. Depends on how many spirits accumulate. He’s pretty good at keeping it manageable.”

“Another month with my grandson. I think I can live with that.”

They both laugh at the joke. Angus fights back tears.

It will be a painful month.

* * *

Angus wrings his hands nervously as he watches Taako try one of his macaroons. It wasn’t his first batch. It wasn’t even his fifth.

Figuring out when to stop mixing is hard.

“You’ve got the texture down, but I can’t taste anything.”

Oh. _Beans._ “Well, you could always use Prestidigitation? Give it a little flavor?”

Taako nods, and does just that, pulling out his UmbraStaff even for a cantrip.

A hit of shimmering red catches his attention, drawing his eyes to where Taako is gripping the handle.

From the very end is a wisp of something red and shimmering, reaching out to grasp around the handle.

It looks like a hand. If hands were red and shimmery.

Then Taako loses control of the UmbraStaff, and the magical focus burns three letters into the cafeteria wall.

**L**

**U**

**P**

And Angus may not know exactly who is in Taako’s UmbraStaff, but he’s going to _find out._

* * *

Angus has seen Kravitz before spotting him on the moon.

He of course knows what he does, and who he is, so Angus makes use of his small size and big, _big_ eyes to follow after Kravitz and Taako. Worried for his teacher in culinary and magical arts.

They don’t do anything but chat, Taako going against the instructor’s words the moment the man’s back is turned is not surprising.

Comforted that nothing is going to go wrong, Angus slips away before he pushes his luck too far.

Angus doesn’t remember the first time he met Kravitz. It was probably at some point the lingering spirits of the dead were gathered up to be herded into the afterlife, but he would have been too young for the event to be imprinted in his memory.

Angus knows Kravitz as the Raven Queen’s emissary, her Reaper.

They didn’t talk, a silent understanding between them, whenever they met. Angus allowed souls of the departed to gather around him, and Kravitz brought them to their final resting place. It works.

Sometimes, Angus wonders about the shapes of their noses. He wonders if he’ll be as tall as the Reaper one day. Then he shakes his head. Kravitz was been working for thousands of years, and his parents died the same day of his birth.

But sometimes, he wished he knew his parents.

Angus is quiet for a long while in his room, before he decides it was time for him to sleep. Good boys who want to grow big and tall have to get lots of good sleep.

* * *

She was panting for breath, struggling to push _push_! And her breath was struggling in her lungs. She pushed again, and the weight disappeared. There was pain, and cramps, but those were expected.

What didn’t happen, was crying.

It was silent. She leaned forward to her husband fearing and hopeful, and those hopes were crushed by the solemn and defeated look he returned.

The babe in his arms didn’t move. He didn’t cry.

His parents did so for him.

Wailing and begging to a force unseen. Hadn’t they been loyal to their Godesses’ beliefs? Why had she given their child the final gift of life?

They were desolate, grieving, and that state is dangerous for anyone. But these two are smart, and  clever (though they know not to boast about it) and they are parents of a dead child they want to save.

So they go to the one being that might give them the chance. The one who took their child away.

They go, in hoods so dark they suck the light from around them, into a circle with their child, cold, swaddled so carefully and lovingly.

They meet the Raven Queen with baubles and things that shine. They give those things freely to gain her attention, and then they ask for a deal.

The Goddess of Death is not one to give in so easily, and barely hears out their trade before she makes her own counteroffer.

Their lives and their deaths, the father’s father’s name, the child will belong to the Raven Queen in time, and the child will take his first breath.

One more thing, she adds before they agree. She already knows they will agree. They love the child even though they will never meet him in life.

“I will choose the boy’s name.”

They agree, of course.

From the circle, with the grandfather now short his name pacing just outside, a babe cries, days late.

The grandfather pulls the baby into his arms, and speaks the words of the Goddess, Raven Queen.

“Welcome to the land of the living, Angus McDonald.”


End file.
